Lorraine Hansberry wrote A Raisin in the Sun using inspiration from her years growing up in the segregated South Side of Chicago. Her father, Carl Augustus Hansberry, was a crusader against that very segregation. At the heart of Hansberry's 'A Raisin in the Sun' is the universal message of the desire for social progress amid the differing opinions on how to achieve it. A Raisin in the Sun is a play about an African American family aspiring to move beyond segregation and disenfranchisement in 1950s Chicago.